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A post by Pat

Today Hillary Clinton spoke before Congress and reiterated a call for crippling sanctions against Iran. The Obama ‘extended hand’ approach is the utter failure every sane person knew it would be. Rather than admit failure, Hillary recently pointed to the obvious that Iran shows signs of being a dictatorship. That revelation was to give a CYA for the administration to pretend it wasn’t their idiotic policy that failed. Oh shucks, what would have worked with the peace-loving mullahs doesn’t have such a bright future with that nasty Republican Guard.

Clinton probably knew better all along but had to defend the extended hand policy. She made brave attempts to convince everyone it was a great accomplishment that Russia and China were more accepting of sanctions than they had ever been under Bush. She’s still talking about how the international community is coming together on sanctions despite the fact that Russia and China both issued statements within the last 36 hours that they do not support crippling sanctions against Iran. We wasted a year. We crippled ourselves.

The following three stories were published on the same day.

Clinton cites progress in Iran sanctions effort

We hope that the next 30 to 60 days will see a sanctions resolution emerge in New York,” she said, referring to U.N. headquarters, where she said U.S. diplomats are working out sanctions language.

She also asserted that a yearlong effort to engage Iran in negotiations over its nuclear program, while unsuccessful, has had the effect of making China and other countries less firmly opposed to new sanctions.

“Our very clear commitment to engagement has created space for a lot of these countries to now consider supporting sanctions that they might not have otherwise, because we have demonstrated the strategic patience to exhaust the international efforts of convincing Iran to do the right thing without sanctions,” she said.

At a separate hearing earlier Wednesday, Clinton said, “I think we’ve made a lot of progress” toward gaining Chinese backing of new sanctions. She was addressing a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on the State Department’s 2011 budget request.

China stresses diplomatic solution to Iran nuclear issue

China Tuesday reiterated that the Iranian nuclear issue should be solved through enhanced diplomatic efforts, amid international pressure to push for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang addressed the first press briefing in Beijing after the Lunar New Year and said China had taken note of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the Iran nuclear issue and hopes “the Iranian side continues to cooperate with the IAEA on related issues.”

[…]

“China holds that the parties should continue to step up diplomatic efforts in a bid to maintain and promote the process of dialogue and negotiations,” said Qin, “China hopes the parties demonstrate more flexibility and create conditions conducive to a comprehensive and proper solution to the Iran nuclear issue through diplomatic means.”

Russia warns West against “crippling” Iran sanctions

Oleg Rozhkov, the deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security affairs and disarmament department, said Moscow would only consider sanctions aimed at strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

“Call them what you want — crippling or paralyzing — we are not got going to work on sanctions or measures which could lead to the political or economic or financial isolation of this country,” Rozhkov told reporters in Moscow.

When asked by a reporter what sanctions Russia might be able to support, he said: “Those that are directed at resolving non-proliferation questions linked to Iran’s nuclear program.”

“What relation to non-proliferation is there in forbidding banking activities with Iran? This is a financial blockade. And oil and gas. These sanctions are aimed only at paralyzing the country and paralyzing the regime,” he said.

[…]

“We do not consider the sanctions path the right one — it pushes the situation further and further into a dead end, a dead end which can only be resolved by force and we do not support that at all,” Rozhkov said of Iran sanction

Anyone who thinks the administration’s policies will cripple Iran has to be blind.